Concert, Gerrit van Honthorst

Description of the picture:

Concert – Gerrit van Honthorst. Around 1626-1630. Canvas, oil. 168×202   Dutch painter Gerrit van Honthorst (1590-1656) he studied painting in Rome in the first half of the 1610s, when there was at the zenith the glory of the recently deceased Caravaggio. Therefore, his canvases are marked by the impact that the art of the master had on him. It manifested itself both in the choice of theme (in his youth, Caravaggio loved to portray musicians), and in the colorful solution of the scene, which was appropriate for his already mature work.   In this picture, in a room illuminated by a ray of light falling from somewhere in the upper window, a company has gathered around the table: a smartly and even elaborately dressed musician plays the viola and gamba, and the guy and the woman sing, holding notes in their hands. The painter endowed the participants of the improvised concert with various feelings: the musician arrogantly stares at the singers, the guy is immersed in singing, the woman is concentrated in notes, the seal of inspiration is on her face, and the old woman seen from behind certainly wants to stick her word.   But Van Honthorst would not be Dutch if he had not brought a funny color to the canvas: a woman touching the song immediately reaches for the young man’s hand, trying to remove the earring from him, the old woman may recommend her how to do it inconspicuously, and even made a purse. And the musician therefore “fusses so hard” that the joyful company arranged the concert only later, in order to rob the wealthy poor man. The second meaning, hidden in an ordinary genre scene, turns the picture into a small story."